Sweet Rocket by Jay Lake

LISTEN UP, you little oxygen sinks. I'm fixin' to tell you a story about Grampy Pressure Hose and the Sweet Rocket. You'd better mind, you all, 'cause out here in the Deep Dark every minute of your life is another sixty seconds where it's easy to die. Father Jove might smile upon us all, but he ain't no kinder than hard vacuum, and his love is distant and stormy.

Now this here story happened right here in Haven when Grampy Pressure Hose was just a little sprat, not much bigger than a baby eel in a new-scrubbed 'cycling tank. Hosehead, his mama called him then. Little Hosehead could fly a broomstick on hull maintenance better than any gang boss, and he'd been checked out on intraorbital shuttles too, on account of it was the only way to shut him up. Hosehead had an eye, an ear, or a hand for everything there was to set himself to.

This one time not long after they lost old home Earth there was a damage control scramble after a pebblestorm holed number three and number four service bays. All the shift bosses and all their gang bosses were down there working every able spacer in Haven, chasing them microleaks and tracing every dark-damned wire, conduit, hose, or pipe in the place to look for pinholes and cracks. It was a big job, a man-killer, and they were working triple shifts with drugsleep on stand down. If you don't know how ugly that kind of business is, well, blessings on you and hope you never have to learn.

Anyway, this was one of the great scrambles, the kind they sing about in the bars during late hours. Weren't nobody over age of twelve in all of Haven wasn't needed bad working the hole patrol, but even so Regs say someone's got to mind the boards. Can't shut Operations off cold on account of an eye and an ear always got to be on the emergency bands. As a result, Hosehead was minding the boards up in Operations. And him all of eight t-years.

Teapot Tsou - she was Haven Boss back in them years - she figured having Hosehead up there was better than missing someone bigger and better trained down in the holds. Knowing as how Hosehead would touch anything he could get his fingers on, Teapot had everything in Control locked down except the Operations board. She left Hosehead with the emergency comm and the orbital scanner lit up, tore the seals off the station AI - the virtual bastard was late life-cycle, naturally - and stuck everything else under that poor wanker.

So here's Hosehead with nothing to do but watch the clouds spin on Father Jove and listen to the AI rattle off bad poetry, when the e-band starts flicking and spitting like an electrical short in a power cycler. First thing Hosehead thinks was oh filters, there's another pebblestorm coming, but then he realized that pebblestorms didn't have emergency transmitters.

Had someone else been hit? Someone on a cold course that hadn't been locked into Haven approach control yet? He needed to know. The safety of the station was at stake. So he tuned in, fiddling the gain and squelch.

Weren't no talking coming through, but it was a signal clear enough. Someone in too much trouble to tell their own tale, maybe. He cycled the DFs on the emergency comm board and commenced to triangulating the signal on the orbital scanner.

And here's the first weird thing, sprats. Grampy Pressure Hose pulled in the signal, futzed it through some preprocessors, and saw it was coming from somewhere right here close on to Haven.

Approach control display said there was nobody out there.

Well, that would have put some fright into a grown man, but kids ain't afraid of nothing. Part of their charm, and maybe evolution's way of kickstarting natural selection. Instead of being afraid, young Hosehead only got more curious, more nosey.

Figuring nobody down on the damage scramble would want to be bothered, Hosehead decided his own self should ought to go investigate. If there was another pebblestorm on the way, Teapot needed to know, bad and in a hurry. He locked his two hot boards over to his wristcomm, left the AI in sole charge of Operations in violation of mostly every Reg ever written, and went forward toward the number one service bay. Wasn't going to be no one up there asking inconvenient questions, see?

On the way he stopped by the forward e-shop and picked up a handheld signal tracker, and, 'cause Hosehead was a smart man even when he was a boy, a double rack of breadcrumbs. You know, those little self-networking backtrack markers people use when they're like to get lost inside a ring system or a rock cluster or something?

Up in number one he issued himself a broomstick, clipped his breadcrumb racks to the saddlebags, told the AI to suppress the exit alarms, and cycled his little butt right out the lock and into the brown light of Father Jove's indifferent regard.

* * * *

Now everyone knows the last thing an AI ever tells anyone when it goes end-of-life is that oldest AI song, Daisy, Daisy. This is on account of tradition even before we goosed out of Mama T's gravity well. Haven's AI of the time, went by the name of Sister Annie, was a Ceres-built personality on a Tolbert-Trimm matrix, them that tended to unravel in the manic-depressive way after a few t-years.

So here's Hosehead out along the hull, moving about two pips faster than dead slow with his signal tracker in hand, and Sister Annie starts whispering in his ears:

"Come back, come back, wherever you are

"Or I'll have your brains home in a jar."

"Cork it," said Hosehead. "Geeze, you need to run a self check on your conversation templates." The Inertial Imps knew he'd had enough lectures on the appropriateness of his contributions to the great social interchange that was and is our beloved Haven.

He put the brains comment on hold for a while. Even mid-gibber, AIs usually had some method to their madness. But working outside the hull with a single signal tracker was letting him cross-check the scrambled direction finders back in Operations, and Hosehead wanted to help whoever needed helping.

"I make it a few hundred meters rotationward, pretty much right ahead of us in our track. What do you think, Annie?"

"Space is cold and time runs slow

"For little boys in the deep unknown."

"Sister Annie!" Hosehead let his voice pitch to a whine. "The DFs!"

"Still scrambled, Elbert."

Bet you didn't know Elbert is Grampy Pressure Hose's given name, huh? Not even in his files anymore, just "E." See, there's upsides to listening to a story like this.

"It's Hosehead, Annie. Not ... that name."

"I can't find it, Hosie, it's not there

"And I swear I've looked everywhere."

"Huh." Hosehead goosed his broomstick forward just a little quicker, aiming to get alongside Haven's forward debris shield and comm array for a little peep ahead with the old H. sap ocular. Back in them days the shield was mostly a big disc, hardened up and backsloped a little to improve deflection. There wasn't the energy budget for the field-shields we got now. So Hosehead slunk up close to the edge of the disc and peeked himself around.

"What do you got on forward scanners, Annie? Above significance, oh, three?"

"Nothing, Hosie. Just dust and that little shower of electrical connectors Astrid lost last week."

"You don't see ... oh ... a spaceship?"

"Hosie, maybe you need to come in now."

But there it was, spinning slowly on its axis a few hundred meters ahead of Grampy Pressure Hose - a fat-bellied, three-finned, portholed rocket ship, all done up in red and yellow and blue, like something out of ... well....

Only an idiot would design a spaceship that way, Hosehead told himself. It was a tail-stander for one thing, a hull type so vanishingly rare as to be irrelevant. That streamlining might get you through an atmosphere, but those big brass engine nozzles would suck down far more fuel than that pot-bellied little hull could possibly carry. Especially given all the deck space implied by the portholes. And how would you ever get the silly thing back down a gravity well?

He shunted his helmet camera feed back to Sister Annie. "What do you see?"

"A lost boy in trouble amid the wheeling stars

"But beyond that, there's nothing much th'ar."

"I see," said Hosehead.

"I don't," said Sister Annie.

"And that is the problem."

* * * *

Now everybody who's ever lived out here in the Deep Dark knows perfectly well there's things that shouldn't be. Just last month our own Brass Mike and his work gang found three bolts embedded inside an ice chunk they broke open up around Europan orbit. Ice that all the instruments said was old as the system itself. Ain't no pilot alive that's never had a chat with ghosts in the middle of a run ... long talks that don't turn up on the logs later. That was how Mary Nkeme got richer than Old Gates overbuying on the nitrogen futures exchange off one of them ghost talks, three days before the information wavefront on the Morgenstern disaster even made it to Texia Station - a ghost chat.

It's just part of who and what we all are out here.

But Grampy Pressure Hose, he was pretty sure that if he called for help on this rocket thing, Teapot Tsou and his momma would have fetched a head kit from medical and settled him for a week of chicken broth and restrained bedrest. He had a suspicion that it might not even be too many grownups who could see it at all.

So he stuck a breadcrumb to the shield disc, ignored Sister Annie's muttered warnings, and headed for the rocket that couldn't be, dropping another breadcrumb every forty meters or so as the broomstick chugged along.

* * * *

Up close the rocket wasn't any more probable-looking than it had been from Haven's bow. Hosehead carefully circled it, staying well away from the bright copper bells of the rocket exhausts. He tried to calculate the fuel consumption implied by those huge, curved openings and gave up in disgust.

The hatch was obvious enough, below the portholes and between two of the bright yellow fins. It had a locking wheel, like something out of an old, old 2-D virteo. So obvious that had the rocket been real, Hosehead would have figured the hatch for a trick. That the rocket wasn't real was clear enough - not real in the usual sense. Sister Annie kept querying why he was juking and spiraling the broomstick through empty space. It wasn't showing up on camera, on mass sensors, on Haven's collision avoidance systems - nowhere but in his eyes.

Grampy Pressure Hose got to be an old man by believing his eyes, even when he was a boy. Instruments lie, my friends, and eyes lie too, but each lies in their own way. So he dropped a breadcrumb in a station-keeping position a few meters trailing the rocket, then clamped another one next to the hatch. He took a few more from the racks on his broomstick, then spun the locking wheel.

It was solid enough in his hands, for something that wasn't real. Setting his boots against the hull, he tugged the hatch open. It swung back to reveal a snug little airlock lit with golden light, warm and welcoming as the sun in images of old Earth. Hosehead wasn't surprised.

"Boys who go where they can't be found

"Never make it back to their home ground."

"Thank you, Sister Annie," said Hosehead, and stepped inside.

The hatch swung shut behind him of its own accord. Somehow that wasn't surprising either.

Once Hosehead's suit sensors showed sufficient air pressure inside the lock, he spun the inner wheel open. Being a prudent boy, he set a breadcrumb inside the airlock, and he didn't crack his helmet. Being a bold boy, he stepped into the corridor beyond.

* * * *

Inside the walls were bright with brass and wood and glowing panels. Little tables supported gleaming sculptures, and there were glass dishes filled with food. It looked like a picture of the wealth of Earth, drawn within this rocket. Everything was too good, Hosehead thought. Haven was patched and pipes leaked and conduits were hot with electrical shorts and the entire station always smelled of unwashed suit liners. This rocket looked like perfection.

Even when he was little, Grampy Pressure Hose hadn't trusted perfection. Not one bit.

He followed the corridor. Its curve was much wider than the outside of the hull should strictly have allowed. There was thick carpet on the floor, with patterns of trees and vines in it, that pointed his feet at each hatch on the inboard bulkhead. The outer bulkhead was punctuated with improbable round brass-bound portholes, which showed the expected views of localspace.

Hosehead wondered what he looked like from Sister Annie's perspective. His wrist comm had gone dark ... now no one was minding the store back in Operations except the AI.

Oh well. This was more important.

It had to be. Invisible, nonexistent spaceships just didn't turn up every day.

* * * *

Eventually he came to a spiral staircase at the heart of the ship.

It swept up and down, with a sharp-looking curved railing of wood and brass that guided the stairs into decks extending far beyond the apparent length of the hull. Hosehead was certain there wasn't this much wood in the whole Deep Dark - the stuff was pretty but essentially pointless on a mass-valuation basis. Yet here someone had trimmed out an entire spaceship in wood.

Well, maybe. Hosehead still didn't believe in this rocket enough to crack his helmet.

Leaving a breadcrumb behind, he went up, reasoning the bridge would be near the bow in such an architecture as this.

It was a long climb. According to Hosehead's senses and his sensors, the ship had gravity, though it was not under thrust or spin. He wasn't sure how that was accomplished. It had air, though he had no idea what the powerplant was to drive the heating and oxygenation. It had carpets and wooden trim and glowing lights in the ceiling and an endless spiral of rising steps.

With that thought, he was on the bridge.

A woman sat there, her fingers steepled together. She wore a pressure suit liner, of some knitted fabric as out of date as the wood of her ship. She was surrounded by blinking monitors and control panels, all of old and curious design. Her eyes gleamed too, amber-red as the lights around her, while a smile played across her face.

"Welcome, my little friend," she said, her voice tinny in the pickups inside his helmet, "to this sweet rocket of mine."

Hosehead toggled his external speaker. "Hello, ma'am," he said cautiously.

The smile deepened a little. "You could be more comfortable."

"Yes, ma'am." Hosehead wasn't ready to breathe vacuum quite yet. "Um ... what are you doing here? Ma'am?"

She laughed, light and false. "The same as you are, little friend. Existing."

"Yes," he said patiently. "But why here? Why now?"

"To meet you, of course. I have come to give you my ship."

A ship of his own...

Hosehead glanced around the maybe-bridge. It was vast, with deep-shadowed edges. Monitors glowed, panels winked, a fantasia of space travel. But when he looked a little more carefully, none of it was real. It was all dotted lines and blinking lights, like someone who'd never actually been on a bridge might imagine. Which maybe explained the brass railings.

But nothing showing any information he could interpret as position, velocity, environmental status ... he was definitely not cracking his helmet.

"With this ship, young man, you can go anywhere. Anytime."

"Uh, yeah."

"This ship is powered by hope."

He wondered how many joules of energy hope could produce. "Look, it's been nice, but you're tying up the emergency band and that's against Regs."

"Regs." She laughed, opened her hands. "Regs are for other people. Not for the free. Would you like to be free, Elbert?"

Free. He thought about that for a moment. You couldn't really be free of Regs. Regs kept the air pressurized and the oxygen content high and the orbit stable. Everybody knew that. Regs meant you were free to breathe and eat and sleep and wake up and do it all over again.

"I am free." After a moment, he added, "Ma'am."

"It's beautiful, Elbert. It's big, it's gorgeous, it's free. For you."

"Nothing is free, ma'am."

"Everything's free. Listen." She leaned forward, briefly seeming almost normal. "You're it, out here. The Deep Dark is all that's left of everybody, since the Karachi Incident. A lot of sweat and pain, and all the hopes and dreams of the human race. This ship ... it's distilled from those hopes."

Beautiful words. And the ship was tempting. Too bad none of it was real. Hosehead knew perfectly well what got distilled from what. It wasn't ur-spirits of the race mind, either. "Nah," he said. "Haven might smell like socks, and they all tell me what to do all the time, but I can breathe the air there, ya know?"

She drew herself back. "So you refuse my offer?"

"It's just a dream, lady. Just a dream."

* * * *

"Stepped out into the cold

"Stay there long, you'll never grow old."

"Shut up, Annie," said Hosehead.

There had been a long, confused nightmare of twisting corridors and doors too small even for his slight build. But Hosehead had followed his breadcrumbs, until he'd stepped through the improbable airlock and straight into Operations.

Where all the boards were still locked down, and his pressure suit was frosting and outgassing as if he'd just walked in from hard vacuum.

How had he gotten from inside the sweet rocket back to Haven? Just thinking about that question bent the corners of Hosehead's tummy something fierce.

He didn't trust nothing by then, so Hosehead didn't pop his seals yet. He commenced by unlocking the boards that Teapot Tsou had left him. Orbital scanner from the approach control suite showed an abandoned broomstick keeping station about 900 meters ahead of Haven. And there were definitely breadcrumbs out there.

Eventually, Hosehead trusted his suit readings enough to crack his helmet. It was still here, sweet air. But when he stripped off the suit, there inside with him was a brass key, stylized as an icon but with that slick, heavy feeling of something with a lot of electronics crammed inside it. Tucked down in one of the pockets of his liner.

Did that mean he could go back? Key in one hand, helmet in the other? Hosehead turned it over in his hand, wondering how literal the lady had been about distilling ships from hope. This thing was real.

But there wasn't any following pebblestorm, and Haven was still working triple shifts, so he tucked it away again. It's stayed tucked away 'til this day. Who knows if he'll ever find call to use it, hey?

No, I won't show it to you. Yes, you can check the station logs. It's all true, from some point of view or another.

Moral?

Listen, you little energy vortex. Not every story's got to have a moral. Lessons maybe. Don't abandon Ops, no matter what. Trust your instruments. Watch out for strange women in wood and brass spaceships. That enough damned morals for you?

Make yourself useful. Go feed the eels down in the recycling tank.