Time Bomb and Zahndry Others Part 6

La.s.sarr evidently missed the implications of that. "It's too late. Disa.s.sembly has begun; our new course is plotted."

"But not yet executed," Orofan pointed out. "And equipment can be rea.s.sembled. This path is not honorable, Voyagemaster."

Deliberately, La.s.sarr turned his back on the s.h.i.+pmaster. "Prepare to execute the course change," he instructed Pliij.

"You leave me no alternative," Orofan sighed.

La.s.sarr spun around*and froze, holding very tightly to the console, his eyes goggling at the a.s.sault gun nestled in Orofan's tentacle. "Have you gone insane, s.h.i.+pmaster?""Perhaps," Orofan said. "But I will not face the ancestors having stood by while war was made against a race which has offered no provocation."

"Indeed?" La.s.sarr's voice dripped with the sarcasm of fear and anger combined. "And destroying them outright, without warning, is more honorable? A few aarns ago you didn't think so. Or do you intend instead to condemn a million Sk'cee to death?"

"I don't know," Orofan said, gazing at the screen that showed the approaching star. "There is still time to decide which path to take."

La.s.sarr was aghast. "You're going to leave this decision to a last-aarmi impulse?"

"Orofan, there's barely a tenth of an aarn left," Pliij said, his voice strained.

"I know." Orofan focused on La.s.sarr. "But the Dawnsent is mine, and with that power goes responsibility for its actions. It is not honorable to relinquish that load."

Slowly, as if finally understanding, La.s.sarr signed agreement. "But the burden may be transferred to one who is willing," he said quietly.

"And what then of my honor?" Orofan asked, tentacles rippling with half-bitter amus.e.m.e.nt. "No. Your honor is safe, Voyagemaster*you were prevented only by force from following the path you deemed right. You may face the ancestors without fear." He hefted the a.s.sault gun. "The final choice is now mine. My honor, alone, stands in the dock."

And that was as it should be, Orofan knew. In the silence he stared at the screen and made his decision.

Ten minutes till cutoff. Alone on the bridge, Chandra tried to watch every read-out at once, looking for deviations from their calculated course. The Origami's navigational computer was as good as anything on the market, but for extremely fine positioning it usually had the aid of beacons and maser tracking. Out here in the middle of nowhere, six A.U. from the sun, the computer had to rely on inertial guidance and star positions, and Chandra wasn't sure it could handle the job alone.

She reached for the intercom, changed her mind and instead switched on the radio. The lifeboat bay intercoms were situated a good distance from the boats themselves, and Goode would have a better chance of hearing her over the boat's radio. "Goode? How's it going?" she called.

Her answer was a faint grunt of painful exertion. "Goode?" she asked sharply.

"Trouble, Captain," his voice came faintly, as if from outside the boat. Chandra boosted both power and gain, and Goode's next words were clearer. "One of the lines of the boat's cradle is jammed*something's dug into the mesh where I can't get at it. I'll need a laser torch to cut it."

"d.a.m.n. The nearest one's probably in the forward hobby room." Chandra briefly considered dropping back to one gee while Goode was traveling, but immediately abandoned the idea. At this late stage that would force extra high-gee deceleration to still get to the rendezvous position on time, and there was no guarantee they had the fuel for that.

Goode read her mind, long-distance. "Don't worry, I can make it. What's the latest on the Intruder?"

"As of four minutes ago, holding steady. At a light-minute to the nearest tachs.h.i.+p, though, that could be a little old.""I get the point. On my way."

The minutes crawled by. Eyes still on the read-outs, Chandra mentally traced out Goode's path: out the bay, turn right, elevator or stairway down two decks, along a long corridor, into the Number Two hobby and craft shop; secure a torch from the locked cabinet and return. Even with twice-normal weight she thought she was giving him plenty of time, but she was halfway through her third tracing when the drive abruptly cut off.

The sudden silence and weightlessness caught her by surprise, and she wasted two or three seconds fumbling at the radio switch. "Goode!" she shouted. "Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

There was no reply. She waited, scanning the final location figures. Sure enough, the Origami had overshot the proper position by nearly eighty meters. She was just reaching for her power controls when the radio boomed.

"I'm back," Goode said, panting heavily. "I didn't trust the elevator*didn't realize how hard the trip back would be. Sorry."

"Never mind; just get to work. Is there anything you can hang onto? I've got to run the nose jets."

"Go ahead. But, d.a.m.n, this torch is a genuine toy. I don't know how long it'll take to cut the boat loose."

A chill ran down Chandra's spine, and it was all she could do to keep from hitting the main drive and getting them the h.e.l.l out of there. "Better not be long, partner. It's just you and me and a runaway monorail out here."

"Yeah. Hey*couldn't you call for a tachs.h.i.+p to come and get us?"

"I already thought of that. But the nearest tachs.h.i.+p is only a light-minute out, way too close to get here in one jump. He'd have to jump out a minimum of two A.U., then jump back here. Calculating the direction and timing for two jumps that fine-tuned would take almost twenty minutes, total."

"d.a.m.n. I didn't know that*I've never trained for tachs.h.i.+ps." A short pause. "The first three strands are cut; seven to go. Minute and a half, I'd guess."

"Okay." Chandra was watching the read-outs closely. "We're almost back in position; I'll be down there before you're done. The boat ready otherwise?"

"Ready, waiting, and eager."

"Not nearly as eager as I am." A squirt of the main drive to kill their velocity as the nose jets fell silent; one more careful scan of the read-outs*"I'm done. See you below."

Goode was on the second to the last of the cable strands when she arrived. "Get in and strap down," he told her, not looking up.

She did, wriggling into the pilot's couch, and was ready by the time he scrambled in the opposite side.

Without waiting for him to strap down, she hit the "release" b.u.t.ton.

They were under two gees again practically before clearing the hull. Holding the throttle as high as it would go, Chandra confirmed that they were moving at right angles to the Intruder's path. Only then did she glance at the chrono.

Ninety seconds to impact.Next to her, Goode sighed. "I don't think we're going to make it, Chandra," he said, his voice more wistful than afraid.

Chandra opened her mouth to say something rea.s.suring*but it was the radio that spoke. "Avis T-466 to Origami lifeboat; come in?"

A civilian tachs.h.i.+p? "Lifeboat; Captain Carey here. Listen, you'd better get the h.e.l.l out of*"

"I know," the voice interrupted. "I eavesdropped a bit on your problems via radio. You're running late, but I'm right behind you. Kill your drive; I think I've got time to grapple onto you."

Chandra hadn't bothered to look at the 'scope yet, but even as she killed the drive Goode was pointing at it. "There he is. Coplanar course, intercept vector, two-five gee...." The blip changed direction slightly, and Chandra realized suddenly that an amateur was at the controls.

Goode realized it, too. Muttering something, he jabbed at the computer keyboard, kicking in the drive again. "Tachs.h.i.+p, we're s.h.i.+fting speed and vector to match yours at intercept; just hold your course," he called. "You've got standard magnetic grapples?"

"Yes, and they're all set. Sit tight; here I come."

The seconds ticked by. The blip on the 'scope was coming up fast... and then it was on top of them, and the lifeboat lurched hard as the grapples caught. "Gotcha!" the radio shouted. "Hang on!"

And with seconds to spareThe universe vanished. Blackness filled the viewports, spilled like a physical thing into the lifeboat. For five long secondsAnd the sun exploded directly in front of them, brighter than Chandra had seen it for weeks. A dozen blips crawled across the 'scope, and the lifeboat's beacon-reader abruptly came to life, informing them they were six thousand kilometers north-west-zenith of Earth's Number Twelve navigational beacon.

Beside her, Chandra felt Goode go limp with released tension. "Still with me?" the radio asked.

"Sure are," Chandra said, wiping the sweat off her palms. "I don't know how to thank you, Mr.*?"

"Dr. Louis Du Bellay," the voice identified himself. "And don't thank me yet. If what you did out there didn't work, there's a worse death coming for all of us."

Chandra had almost forgotten about that. The thought sobered her rising spirits considerably. "You're right. Can you get us into contact with Peacekeeper HQ? We need to report in."

"I can maybe do better than that. Come aboard and we'll find out."

They were given special priority to land, and a car was standing by for them at the field.

General Carey was waiting outside the Situation Room. "I ought to pull your pilot's license for going out there against specific Peacekeeper orders," he told Du Bellay half-seriously, even as he gave his daughter a bear hug. "If Mahendra hadn't confessed to helping you get hold of that tachs.h.i.+p I probably would. But he's too good a man to lose to a court-martial. Let's get inside; the Chasers have been reporting in fornearly twenty minutes."

Mahendra looked up as the group approached. "Captain Carey and Officer Goode? Congratulations; it looks like you've done it."

Chandra felt a lump the thickness of ion s.h.i.+elding in her throat. "We slowed him?"

"No, but you deflected him a couple hundredths of a second in the right direction."

"Confirmed?" General Carey asked sharply, as if not daring to believe it.

"Confirmed, sir," Mahendra nodded. "He'll be pa.s.sing through the upper solar chromosphere instead of deep into the photosphere. We'll get some good flares and a significant radiation increase for a few weeks, but nothing much worse than that."

"And the Intruder hasn't tried to correct his course?" Du Bellay asked quietly.

Mahendra's expression was both sad and grim. "No, Doctor."

Puzzled, Chandra glanced between her father, Mahendra, and Du Bellay, all of whom wore the same look. Even Goode's face was starting to change... and suddenly she understood. "You mean... the impact killed all of them?"

Carey put his arm around her shoulders. "We had no choice, Chandra. It was a matter of survival. You understand, don't you?"

She sighed and, reluctantly, nodded. Goode took her arm and led her to a nearby chair. Sitting there, holding tightly to his hand, she watched with the rest of the Situation Room as the computer plot of the Intruder's position skimmed the sun's surface and shot out once more toward deep s.p.a.ce. What had they been like, she wondered numbly... and how many of them had she killed so that Earth could live?

She knew she would never know.

Behind the Dawnsent, the star receded toward negative infinity, its light red-s.h.i.+fted to invisibility. With mixed feelings Orofan watched its shrinking image on the screen. Beside him, Pliij looked up from the helmboard. "We're all set, s.h.i.+pmaster. The deviation's been calculated; we can correct course anytime in the next hundred aarns." He paused, and in a more personal tone said, "You did what was necessary, Orofan. Your honor is unblemished."

Orofan signed agreement, but it was an automatic gesture. The a.s.sault gun, he noticed, was still in his tentacle, and he slipped it back into its sheath.

A tentacle touched his. "Pliij is right," La.s.sarr said gently. "Whatever craft that was, its inhabitants had almost certainly been killed by our scoop before we detected it. You could have done nothing to help them. Refusing to accept the s.h.i.+p's ma.s.s at that point would have been dishonorable. You did well; your decisions and judgments have been proved correct."

"I know," Orofan sighed. It was true; fate had combined with his decisions to save the system from destruction without adding appreciable time to the Dawnsent's own journey. He should be satisfied.

And yet... the a.n.a.lyzers reported significant numbers of silicon, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms among the metals of the s.p.a.cecraft the Dawnsent had unintentionally run down. Which of thoseatoms had once belonged to living creatures?... And how many of those beings had died so that the Sk'cee might reach their new home?

He knew he would never know.

Between a Rock and a High Place

"Ladies and gentlemen, shuttles one and two for United Flight 1103 are now ready for general boarding: Skyport service from Houston to Dallas-Ft. Worth, Los Angeles, and San Francisco."

Peter Whitney was ready; he'd been standing at the proper end of the waiting lounge for the past several minutes, as a matter of fact, eagerly awaiting the announcement. Picking up his carry-on bag, he stepped to the opening door, flashed his boarding pa.s.s for the attendant's inspection, and walked down the short tunnel to where the shuttle waited. The excitement within him seemed to increase with every step, a fact that embarra.s.sed him a little*a twenty-eight-year-old computer specialist shouldn't be feeling like a kid on his first trip to Disney World, after all. But he refused to worry too much about it. Professional solemnity was still, for him, a recent acquisition, easily tucked out of the way.

The shuttle itself was unimpressive, of course: little more than a Boeing 727 with a heavily modified interior. Following the flight attendant's instructions he sat down in the front row, choosing the left-hand window seat. Pus.h.i.+ng his bag into the compartment under his chair, he fastened his lap/shoulder belt and spent the next few minutes examining the ski lift-style bars connecting his pair of seats to the conveyors behind the grooves in floor and ceiling. He'd seen specs and models for the system back in St. Louis, but had never given up being amazed that it worked as well as it did in actual practice.

His seatmate turned out to be a smartly-suited businesswoman type who promptly pulled out her Wall Street Journal and buried herself in it. A bored executive who flew in Skyports every week, obviously, and her indifference helped dispel Whitney's last twinges of guilt at having taken the window seat.

Within a very few minutes the shuttle was loaded and ready. The door was closed, the tunnel withdrawn, and soon they were at the edge of the runway, awaiting permission to take off. Whitney kept an eye on his watch with some interest*Skyport logistics being what they were, a shuttle couldn't afford to be very late in getting off the ground. Even knowing that, he was impressed when the plane roared down the runway and into the sky only twelve seconds behind schedule.

They turned east, heading into the early-morning sun to meet the Skyport as it headed toward them from its New Orleans pickup. Whitney watched the city disappear behind them, and then s.h.i.+fted his gaze forward, wondering how far away something the size of a Skyport could be seen. Docking, he knew, would take place seventy to eighty miles out from Houston; a.s.suming the shuttle was flying its normal four-ninety knots*five-sixty-odd miles an hour*meant an eight to nine minute trip. They'd covered seven of that already; surely they must be coming up on it by now. Unless...

With smooth abruptness, the horizon dropped below the level of his window, and Whitney knew he'd goofed. The Skyport was somewhere off to the shuttle's right, and the smaller craft was now circling around to get into docking position. Belatedly he realized he should have asked the flight attendant which was the scenic side when he boarded.

The pa.s.sengers on the other side of the aisle were beginning to take an interest in the view out their windows, and Whitney craned his neck in an effort to see. Nothing but ground and sky were visible from where he sat; but even as he settled back in mild disappointment the shuttle leveled out and began to climb... and suddenly, ahead and above them, the Skyport loomed into view.No film clip, scale model, or blueprint, Whitney realized in that moment, could ever fully prepare one for the sheer impact of a Skyport's presence. A giant flying wing, the size of seven football fields laid end to end, the Skyport looked like nothing else in aviation history*looked like nothing, in fact, that had any business being up in the air in the first place. The fact that it also flew more efficiently than anything else in the sky seemed almost like a footnote in comparison, though it was of course the economic justification for the six Skyports now in service and McDonnell Douglas's main argument in their ongoing sales campaign. Staying aloft for weeks or months at a time, the Skyports were designed for maximum efficiency at high alt.i.tudes and speeds, dispensing with the heavy landing gear, noise suppressors, and high-lift flaps required on normal jetliners. And with very little time spent on the ground amid contaminants like dust and insects, the Skyports had finally been able to take advantage of the well-known theories of laminar flow control, enabling the huge craft to fly with less than half the drag of planes with a fraction of their capacity. In Whitney's personal view, it was probably this incredible fuel efficiency that had finally convinced United and TWA to take a chance on the idea.

The shuttle was directly behind the Skyport now and closing swiftly. From his window Whitney could see five of the seven basically independent modules that made up the Skyport and, just barely, the two port engines of the sixth. That would be all right; since only the center module's engines fired during this part of the flight, docking one module in from the end was essentially equivalent in noise and turbulence to docking in the end section. Docking one module from center, on the other hand, was rumored to be a loud and rather unnerving experience. It was a theory he wasn't anxious to test.

A flash of sunlight off to the left caught his eye*the second Houston shuttle, making its approach toward the second-to-last module at the other end. He watched with interest as the distant plane nosed toward its docking bay, watched it until the port-side engines of his own shuttle's target module blocked it from sight. The silvery trailing edge of the Skyport was very near now, and the slight vibration that had been building almost imperceptibly began to increase at a noticeable rate. Whitney was just trying to estimate the vibrational amplitude and to recall the docking bay's dimensional tolerance when a sound like a m.u.f.fled ba.s.s drum came from the fuselage skin a meter in front of him and the vibration abruptly stopped. The docking collar, clamping solidly around them. With the noise of the Skyport's engines still filling the cabin, Whitney's straining ears had no chance of picking up the nosewheel's descent into the docking bay; but he did distinctly hear the thump as the bay's forward clamp locked onto the nosewheel's tow bar. Only then, with the shuttle firmly and officially docked, did he realize he'd been holding his breath. He let it out with a wry smile, feeling more than ever like a kid on a ride Disney had never dreamed of.

Another soft thump and hiss signaled that the pressurized tunnel was in place. A cool breeze wafted through the shuttle as the outer door was opened*and suddenly Whitney and his seatmate were moving, their ski lift seats following the grooves in floor and ceiling as they were moved first into the aisle and then forward toward the exit. They turned left at the doorway, and Whitney caught just a glimpse of the shuttle's other seats in motion behind him. Then, with only the slightest jerk of not-quite-aligned grooves, they were out of the shuttle and into a flexible-walled corridor that looked for all the world like the inside of an accordion. The tunnel was short, leading to another airplane-type doorway. Straight ahead, stretching down a long corridor, Whitney could see a column of seats like his own, filled with pa.s.sengers for the shuttle's trip back down to Houston. There didn't seem to be enough room beside the column for the emerging seats to pa.s.s by easily, but Whitney was given little time to wonder about it. Just beyond the doorway his seat took a ninety-degree turn to the right, and he found himself sidling alongside a wall toward what looked like a lounge. To his left he could see the rest of the shuttle's seats following like a disjointed snake. The airlines had balked at the ski lift system, he remembered, complaining that it was unnecessarily complicated and expensive. But the time the shuttle spent in the docking bay translated into fuel for its return flight, and the essence of that was money... and the ski lift system gave the shuttle a mere ten-minute turnaround.It was indeed a sort of lounge the chairs were taking them into, a rectangular s.p.a.ce done up with soft colors and a carpet designed to disguise the grooves in the floor. In the center was a large, four-sided computer display giving destinations and the corresponding modules in large letters. Whitney's seatmate retrieved her briefcase from under her chair and hopped off as the chair entered the room and began to sidle its way across the floor; glancing at the display, she strode out through one of the wide doorways in the far wall. Whitney obeyed the rules, himself, waiting until the seat had come to a complete stop before undoing his belt and standing up. He was in module six, the display informed him, and pa.s.sengers for Los Angeles could sit anywhere in modules one, two, six, or seven. Since his boarding pa.s.s indicated he'd be disembarking from module six anyway, it made the most sense to just stay here, a decision most of the others also seemed to have reached. Picking up his carry-on, he joined the surge forward. A short corridor lined with lavatory doors lay ahead; pa.s.sing through it, he entered* Instant disorientation.

The room before him was huge, and was more a combination theater-cafe-lounge than an airplane cabin.

Directly in front of him was a section containing standard airline chairs, but arranged in patterns that varied from the traditional side-by-side to cozy circles around low tables. To either side were small cubicles partially isolated from the main floor by ceiling-length panels of translucent, gray-tinted plastic.

Further on toward the front of the Skyport, partially separated from the lounge by more of the tinted plastic, was a section that was clearly a dining area, with tables of various sizes and shapes, about a third of them occupied despite the early hour. Beyond that, the last section seemed to be divided into three small movie/TV rooms.

It all seemed almost scandalously wasteful for a craft that, for all its size and majesty, still had to answer to the law of gravity; but even as Whitney walked in among the lounge chairs he realized the extravagance was largely illusory. Despite the varied seating, little floor s.p.a.ce was actually wasted, and most of that would have been required for aisles, anyway. The smoked-plastic panels gave the illusion that the room was larger than it actually was, while at the same time adding a sense of coziness to all the open s.p.a.ce; and the careful use of color disguised the fact that the room's ceiling wasn't much higher than that of a normal jetliner.

For a few minutes Whitney wandered more or less aimlessly, absorbing the feel of the place. A rumble from his stomach reminded him that he'd had nothing yet that morning except coffee, though, and he cut short his exploration in favor of breakfast. Sitting down at one of the empty tables, he scanned the menu card briefly and then pushed the call b.u.t.ton in the table's center. Safety, he noted, had not been sacrificed to style; the table and chair were both fastened securely to the floor, and the metal buckle of a standard lap/shoulder belt poked diffidently at his ribs.

"Good morning, sir*may I help you?" a pleasant voice came from behind him. He turned as she came into view to his right: a short blonde, trim and athletic-looking in her flight attendant's uniform, pus.h.i.+ng a steam cart before her. The cart surprised him a bit, but it was instantly obvious that true restaurant service for what could be as many as eight hundred pa.s.sengers would be well-nigh impossible for the module's modest crew. Out of phase with the decor or not, precooked tray meals were the only way to serve such a crowd.

There were some illusions that even a Skyport couldn't handle.

"Yes. I'd like the eggs, sausage, and fruit meal*number two here," he told her, indicating it on the menu.

"Certainly." Opening a side door on her cart, she withdrew a steaming tray and placed it before him. The aroma rising with the steam made his stomach rumble again. "Coffee?" she added."Please. By the way, is there anything like a guided tour of the Skyport available? Upstairs, too, I mean?"

Her forehead wrinkled a bit as she picked up a mug and began to fill it. "The flight deck? I'm afraid not*FAA regulations forbid pa.s.sengers up there."

"Oh. No exceptions, huh?"

"None that I know of." She set the mug down and placed a small cup of cream beside it. "Any special reason you'd like to go up there, or are you just curious?"

"Both, actually. I work for McDonnell Douglas, the company that built this plane. I've been doing computer simulations for them, and now they're transferring me to L.A. to do some stuff on their new navigational equipment. I thought that as long as they were flying me out on a Skyport anyway, it would give me a jump on my orientation if I could look around a bit."

The attendant looked duly impressed. "Sounds like interesting work*and about a million miles over my head. I can talk to the captain, see if we can break the rules for you, but I can't make any promises. Would you give me your name, please, and tell me where you'll be after breakfast?"

"Peter Whitney, and I'll probably be back in the lounge. And, look, don't go breaking any rules*this isn't important enough for anyone to get into trouble over."