Back | Next
Contents

III

Pops had flown better spaceships than this one. He had just turned 73, and for more than 50 of those years he had been a pilot for the System Patrol. He'd begun flying during the Belt War of Independence, first in the small Mosquito-class fighters, then up to Balrog-class bombers.

Most recently during the current war with the Belt, he'd been jockeying top-of-the-line Capitol Products streakbombers. The ship he was now in was also of Capitol Products manufacture, but it had come out of the civilian shipyards, for the Patricia was a freighter. Two short, thick cylinders tied together with struts and open framework, a cockpit in the front and a fusion motor in the back: she was a sturdy, solid performer.

Paula Eriksen came up front from her sleeping cubicle. "Where are we, Pops?" she said around a yawn.

Pops confirmed their position from the console. "We're just over a billion klicks out from Fort Conger Station, which means we should hear from them anytime now about beginning the tests. How was your beauty sleep?"

"If you weren't such a harmless old man, I'd hit you for a comment like that," Paula said. "But I slept just fine, thank you very much."

Pops laughed.

It was funny, Pops thought, how events so outside your own life have such immediate effects. For years people had speculated about how changed the world would be once alien intelligences were contacted, had proclaimed the massive paradigm shift to how humans thought of themselves that the discovery would engender.

But seldom did anyone focus on how the monumental discovery would affect individuals in anything but the most general way. For Pops never would have thought that the discovery of the aliens would lead to his being in a freighter with a stunning civilian propulsion tech nine astronomical units outside of the Hague Limit.

A light started blinking on the control board. "That's our message incoming," Pops said. The message was not visual or audio. It had come over tight laser beam, encrypted, and when the communication computer displayed the decoded message, it said exactly what Pops had been told it would: Position confirmed. Commence test at 1400.

"Kind of a blah message considering what it is we're about to test," Paula said.

"Blah it may be, but the test starts in thirty minutes. I'd better get into my power suit and down into the cargo bay," Pops replied.

Pops went into the back section and the closet-sized cubicle that was his room. He stripped, revealing a tough, wiry body that called into question his chronological age. Quickly he climbed into his power suit, checked all the monitors, kicked in the full juice to the power servos, and set out for the cargo bay. For this mission, his suit weaponry had been removed. He felt naked without it.

The airlock cycled and Pops walked into the cavern, lit only by a row of lights along each wall. The bay was under vacuum since it was easier to keep the cargo clean that way. No one wanted this experiment fussed up by any stray dust particles, not that such was likely. The cargo hold was empty except for two pallets that sat in the middle of the floor, held there gently by the one-tenth g field that was typical for this class of freighter. On the port side pallet was a collection of boxes and cylinders running tentacles of wire and optical fibers up to a dozen places on the hull. Those wires were attached to tracking and monitoring devices attached outside the ship for this unique mission.

The other pallet held the experiment itself. It looked something like a coffin with two cylinders, each attached by its own boom, projecting from the end. Pops knew that inside the "coffin" was a first-rate minifusion generator and no shortage of mysterious scientific gadgetry. And Dykstra's crowning achievement, too.

"Ten more minutes, Pops," Paula said over the comm. "I'm opening the bay doors. Go ahead and push our baby out."

The doors above him slowly slid apart revealing a nicely framed sea of stars with a ribbon of Milky Way splitting it diagonally. Pops recalled a time when an experiment of this magnitude would have demanded the construction of a million-credit device to move the experiment the ten meters from the floor of the cargo bay out through the door. Fortunately, he was living in a time when a man in a power suit was recognized for his worth.

Pops gently lifted the box off the pallet. It massed over 2,000 kilos, an appreciable weight even in a tenth of a gravity. Taking aim, Pops jumped, and the leg servos provided all the thrust necessary to take him and his burden through the doors. He had sailed a hundred meters out from the Patricia when he let go of the box and stopped himself with the suit jets. "I'm clear, Paula. How much time now?"

"Five minutes. You'd better get inside if you want to watch."

"Why inside? I think I'll just watch it from out here."

"Suit yourself," Paula replied. "Now shut up while I orient the thing." Pops saw little jets fire briefly on the corners of the box. Paula was lining up the experiment's momentum vector so that it was pointing radially away from the sun. Pops' jump from the ship had been pretty much in the right direction to begin with, but Paula was laying it into just the right groove.

Pops took his eyes off the box even as it continued its lazy journey away and looked around him at the endless night. The notion of alien beings "out there" had long ago been discredited, though he knew that in the past there had been periods when their eventual discovery was thought to be a certainty. But the Universe didn't seem to care much about human notions, and so while the "we are alone" paradigm reigned in exobiological circles, aliens, hostile ones, showed up.

They were out there now, in the Oort cloud. Waiting.

When the Patricia had left Fort Conger Station—itself already 59 A.U. from the sun—Pops had piloted the ship for several days to put another billion kilometers behind her. They were out there to test the first human FTL drive, and it wasn't known if the aliens would be able to find out what they were doing or not. For all anyone knew, turning on the drive might be like setting off a flare to some alien sensor array. It was possible that those aliens would come seeking the source of the test. Hopefully, they wouldn't find Fort Conger Station, not with her a billion klicks sunward, but they'd almost certainly find the Patricia.

Pops knew what would happen then. He was at Slingshot when their raid had hit there, had lost friends, and had seen a hero made. But there would be no heroics from his ship—the Patricia was unarmed. No, at the first sign of the aliens, Pops was under orders to issue a single command to the ship's computer, and it would set off the warhead hidden under the deck plates of the cargo bay.

Paula didn't know about that. Pops hoped she wouldn't have to find out.

"Thirty seconds, old man, to the sublight test," Paula said. "Can you even still see the box? It's already over three hundred meters away."

"Military power suits have image enhancers and magnification, Paula. I thought you knew that?"

"Well, excuse me," she said. Then: "On my mark. Five, four, three, two, one . . . There she goes!"

"Wow! A hundred gravities. And not a hint of exhaust." As Dykstra had foreseen, as his and Hague's tinkering had produced, the experimental drive twisted and contorted, thinned and thickened space-time in such a way that the coffin box fled the sun at 100 gees. After a few moments, Pops said, "It's out of sight, now. I'm coming aboard to watch the hyperflight test."

"Roger, Roger," Paula said. Pops winced—she'd used that joke about ten times too often already, and he'd probably heard it a million times in his career. As he headed back, Paula kept him informed. "Telemetry looks good. We're getting all the data, and everything seems to be within the expectation values. This friend of yours Dykstra really knows his stuff." Pops had gotten to know the legendary Dr. Dykstra briefly on the Moon, when he'd brought in the alien hyperdrive motor from Slingshot. Briefly, but not too briefly that the man hadn't felt free to ask him for a very important favor.

A favor that he would soon know whether or not he'd be honoring.

Pops reentered the ship through the cargo bay doors, and jetted to the airlock rather than waiting to hit the floor and walking. He was out of the lock, out of his power suit, and back in the cockpit in less than three minutes.

"You didn't waste any time," Paula said. "I didn't think an old man could move that fast."

"That's probably not the only time you didn't think," Pops retorted.

Paula chewed that over, muttered, "Touché," and returned her attention to the monitors. "One hundred seconds to hyperflight. Give me just a second and—" Her fingers danced across the control board. On the center viewscreen the image expanded immensely, and right in the center they could see the box.

"There. Got it. We rigged a feed in from the optical recorders on the instrument pallet right into the cockpit. Now we can watch."

In seconds, history would be made. Or not. Pops had personally witnessed several now famous historical moments in his long career, but he'd never been able to wait for one with a countdown.

The optical trackers kept the image centered and continuously adjusted magnification to keep the box a constant size. One second before zero the space behind the box began to shimmer, a milky ring of mirage stuff formed, and then with a blinding blue-white streak the box whipped away at 200 million gravities.

"Holy smoke!" Paula exclaimed.

"So far, so good," Pops said, but he was every bit as impressed. "Quick—how long has it been?"

"That's ten seconds right . . . now. It should be back in normal space and transmitting."

It had been planned for the probe to remain in hyperspace for ten seconds, then drop out and activate a homing beacon. The instruments on the Patricia were looking for that signal now. Dykstra had calculated the velocity the box should have attained in hyperspace. As soon as the signal arrived, they'd have experimental confirmation.

While Paula remained intent on the monitors, Pops turned his attention to the ship's own scanners. He had no idea if the aliens would show up, but he was ready just in case. The destruct code phrase echoed through his head. He prayed he wouldn't have to use it.

Just a tad over four minutes from when the box went hyper, the beacon signal was acquired. "That's bang on," Paula said. "The box was moving at twenty-four times the speed of light!" Other data poured in during the next hour as the box continued to test the Dykstra-Hague hyperdrive—data on energy use, stresses in the engine, Dykstra field instabilities. The box returned to the ship finally, and Pops went out again to bring it inside and return it to the pallet.

There was no sign of the aliens.

This time, Pops thought.

* * *

Sammi had spent the previous evening at her apartment in Luna City. It had been the first time she was home since going to work for the System Patrol, and she'd had to look up some of her old friends. Though she'd loved being able to turn down the gravity in her apartment, and finally sleep in low g again, she had not intended to stay there last night. But she had gotten in late from her friend Martha's and had not felt like taking the military shuttle back to the High Command so late.

Once the shuttle arrived at the base, Sammi didn't bother going to her room since she was as ready as ever for work. She headed straight for her lab.

She walked in and was greeted with, "Well, you're back, Sunshine. I couldn't find you yesterday. I was afraid I was going to miss you this trip."

"Oh, Bob. Hi. If I'd known you were going to come by I wouldn't have taken the day off."

"What did you do?"

"I went back to Luna City for the day. It's been a while. My friends had begun to think the Patrol had spirited me away."

"I see."

"Any news?" Sammi asked.

"More attacks out beyond the Hague Limit. It's gotten the brass stirred up. There's a big argument going on about whether or not to tell the Belt about what Dykstra's accomplished. One side wants to keep quiet so the Solar Union can hoard the alien technology for itself. The other side, Knoedler's group, doesn't think this is any time for humanity to be fighting itself, and wants the Belt to gear up with us and get ready to take on the Phinons if they invade."

"Hmph," Sammi said. "They're arguing in the dark. We don't know enough to know what we should do."

"Yeah. But that's fairly typical in war, Sammi." Since they both knew they would be talking about Dykstra and the plot, Sammi suggested they go to her apartment where they wouldn't be overheard. There, she got Bob coffee and settled down herself with a cup of tea. "You haven't told me how the others are doing," Sammi said. "How is Chris?"

Bob finished swallowing his coffee and set down his cup. "He's like a man possessed," Bob said. "But he's happy. You should see the old guy. He only takes his cane along when we go for walks aboveground. He grew up in the area and he's particularly fond of the lake. When he's working he's down on the floor and greasy up to his elbows just like all the younger techs. Every time I walk into the dry dock I find the trinity of Chris, Arie and Rick clustered around something and talking in that technical lingo of theirs."

"Last time you visited you weren't so cheery about things," Sammi observed. Chris, Bob, and the others had been gone almost two months now, and this was only Bob's second visit.

"Last time I was in a funk because I'd spent too much time inside. It's stupid, just a psychological thing. But I had trouble getting used to the idea that just over my head was a lake, and if the roof gave way, there would be water forcing its way in. I'd much rather live with vacuum outside."

"But you're used to it now?"

"Yeah. And besides, I haven't been stuck there as much lately. I've made a trip to Mars since last time, and taken a couple spins around Earth-Luna." The lieutenant asked if he could get some more coffee, was already standing to get it, but Sammi told him to sit down and went to take care of it herself.

As she drew the coffee, she looked Bob over. He was a good-looking man, no doubt about that. He was also the first man she'd had in her apartment other than Dykstra since she'd come here. She searched her feelings and thoughts to see if there were any incipient desires inside her. Both with relief and reluctance, she told herself there weren't.

"I gather the work has been going well," she said, handing Bob his coffee.

"So the guys tell me. The first tests out beyond the Hague Limit worked to perfection, right down to the last decimal place. Chris was delighted and Hague went off in an ecstasy of `yeses.' "

"What about Rick Vander Kam?" Sammi thought she saw a trace of a frown cross Bob's face, but then it disappeared. "He was happy, too, of course. But working with Hague and Dykstra is a mixed blessing for him. He always was one of the best and brightest, otherwise he wouldn't have been working on the Phinon Project in the first place. But now he's teamed with the two best minds in the whole Solar System, and he's pretty much reminded every day of what he can't do."

"That's too bad," Sammi said. "He always seems like such a nice guy." There was that frown again. Sammi was starting to figure it out.

Bob changed the subject. "The one who has really taken to Earth is Dr. Hague. He just loves it there. I swear he takes the same delight in building sandcastles at the beach as he does in working on the hyperdrive. That, and feeding the squirrels. He's really got a fixation on his squirrels."

"What's going to become of him after this is all done?"

"How's that?"

"Hague. Where will he go after this war business is settled and the Phinon Project is no more?"

"I don't know," Bob said. "I never thought about it."

"I sometimes wonder about what's going to happen to all of us," Sammi said. She was thinking about what would fill the hollowness inside that Steve's death had left once the temporary and partial filling of working on the Project was over. But she wasn't going to discuss it with Bob, so she said, "Getting excited about the trip, Bob?"

The lieutenant looked wistful. "Oh, yes," he said. "I want to get to it." Then he went on. "But that's enough about me and the others. How about your own work, Sammi?"

"I'm making progress," she said. "Tell Chris it's slow but sure. They've hired another genano engineer, but he's not a Ph.D. yet. Oh, and you can also tell him I have the ampules of Promenidepromaine already prepared in what should be the right dosage."

"The what?"

"Promenidepromaine. PMDP. Just call them knockout drops for Phinons." She went to her workstation and returned with several clear containers of small spheres, each sphere having a hair-thin stinger sticking out. "These things. They're like ordinary injection ampules, except that I had these fabricated with honeycombed buckytube needles. They should be strong enough to penetrate the Phinon skin, assuming you can get close enough to use one."

Bob picked out a sphere and looked it over. "It's an iffy mission," he said. "We'll be lucky if we come back at all. But I don't want to dwell on that question now; I have another one. I was wondering what percentage of the aliens your genanites are going to kill. I mean, just how lethal are those things?"

"They'll kill every one they contact," Sammi said. "Why?"

"I didn't quite mean that. Every deadly virus I've ever heard of never kills everybody. Even some of the nasty things let loose in the wars of the Collapse didn't kill everybody. There are always survivors. I wondered what percentage of the Phinon species you expect your bugs to kill?"

Samantha looked very grim for a minute, then began slowly. "True, no known viral strain kills every host. It's actually a bit of a mystery as to why one never developed. Granted, if one did kill every possible host, it wouldn't survive long as a viral species itself. But there's no way the virus could know that." She looked Bob in the eye. "My genanites will not suffer from that deficiency, Lieutenant. It will kill every damn one of them."

"How?"

"Because I want them to!" she hissed viciously, revealingly, in reply.

That cooled the climate in the room considerably. Sammi knew it—she could feel the coldness inside of her. Bob was beginning to look uncomfortable.

He put down his coffee cup and rose to go. "I guess I'd better be heading out," he said. "Besides, if I hang around too long, I'll have to put up with an interrogation from Vander Kam about you." He smiled.

"About me? Why?"

"He's got a crush on you. You can see the jealousy in his eyes every time he knows I'm leaving for Luna."

Sammi knew Bob was waiting for some kind of reaction from her, no doubt looking for either a sign of interest or one of displeasure. And hoping for the latter, eh, Lieutenant? she thought. It wasn't quite fair of her—Bob had been a perfect gentleman. Still, she wasn't interested in humoring him. "I see," was all she said, and Lieutenant Nachtegall headed back to Earth no wiser.

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed