Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  “Yes?” He finally spoke as the overture died in a crash of timpani drums.

  Emily fumbled her way onto the bridge, her face flushed in a most becoming manner. She set the carton of ice cream on a chair then brushed at her dress with one hand. Her other hand tangled in her hair, attempting to twist it into its usual tight bun. But her eyes caught his, pleading for something. Her hands moved as if on their own.

  “I—” She opened and closed her mouth soundlessly for a long moment. Her hands played with her hair, tugged the neckline of her dress, plucked the skirt.

  Jack caught them and held them still. “We’re alone on the ship, Emily, and about to perish. I think we can dispense with formalities. That dress is lovely. It suits you well.”

  Her blush deepened. “That isn’t entirely true, sir. I mean, Jack.”

  “What? Someone is listening in? I shut down the comm system. No need for them to hear us in our death throes.”

  “You may want to turn it back on, sir.”

  “Whatever for? Emily, there is something I wish to say, that perhaps I should have said years ago.”

  A smile creased the corner of her mouth. “I know, Jack. I feel the same way. I’ve known since I first met you.”

  “You’ve known that my deepest desire was to be a poet not a starship captain?”

  “What? No, not that. I mean I knew you enjoyed composing poetry. You shared it at officer’s mess. I rather enjoyed the one about the peony and the apricot blossom. Very touching.”

  He beamed. “Yes, that one did turn out rather splendid.”

  She pulled her hands free and stepped away. “I can’t do this.” She twisted her hair into a tight knot, then realized she had no way to hold it in place. She let it fall again. “Sir, Nigel Jones is in Engineering. He claims he has a way to save us. And prove FTL travel is possible at the same time. He says he can build his jump drive on our existing engines and push us through Neptune and out the other side. We don’t have to die.”

  He blinked as the soprano in the opera launched into a soaring descant. “We don’t have to die? We aren’t doomed?”

  “That’s what he says. He needs a few supplies, though.”

  Jack turned, leaned on his command chair. That cursed seat his mother had forced him into. His journal of poetry slid from its cushion to thump to the floor. So much for escaping her through death. He’d have to find another way. “Fine. Give him whatever he needs.”

  She reached towards him, as if to comfort him, but her hand stopped short of his sleeve. She hesitated, then pulled it back, clenched it into a fist. Her shoulders slumped. “Yes, sir.” She turned on her heel and marched from the bridge, her back straight as a rod, her bearing all military.

  He spoke only after she was safely out of earshot. “Ah, sweet Emily. Perhaps I’m not the only one with a family heritage I’d rather not claim. Your sapphire dress and wanton curls were truly charming.” She did not need to know how desperately he wanted to dance with her, whisper loving words into those waving locks, hold her close to him and feel her soft warmth.

  Now that they had a chance, he would have to be the captain again. All military precision and uniforms and protocol.

  The opera wove a soft melody, counterpoint to the thunder of the drums.

  Being Captain could wait, at least until the Flying Dutchman was safely rescued by his one true love. He conducted the chorus with vigor.

  “Is this enough?” Emily dumped her armful of wires harvested from the damaged section of the ship.

  Nigel didn’t bother to look as he answered. “Should be. Just leave them over there.” His voice echoed from inside the housing of his contraption.

  “Are you sure that thing is large enough to push the whole ship into jump space?”

  “Plenty large enough. Hand me the converter assemblage.” Nigel stuck a hand out behind him.

  Emily looked over the tangles of junk scattered across the once-pristine engine room. “Which one is the converter?”

  “The one with the red and white bushings on the outside.”

  “The one that looks like a chicken?”

  He pulled his head out of the engine long enough to glare at her. “It does not look like a chicken.”

  She twisted it in her hands, examining different angles. “It does resemble one. See, here’s the head and over here are the wings, and this is the beak.”

  He snatched it out of her hands. “It’s a converter assemblage for the ion diffuser. It is not a chicken!”

  Emily leaned over the housing and peered inside as Nigel crawled into the tubing once more.

  “Is that the ion diffuser? It looks kind of like the turkey I made out of macaroni and dry beans in grade school.”

  Nigel shoved the chicken converter into the back end of the turkey ion diffuser.

  Emily giggled. “My grandmother tried to make turducken once. That’s where you shove a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey.”

  Nigel whacked his head on the housing as he whipped around to face her. “Get out of here, you bird-brained woman! This is a delicate experimental engineering marvel, not a strange bird dish you serve at Thanksgiving! Go find me something I can use for carpathian strickenings.”

  “Sure, I’ll just go do that.”

  Nigel’s reply was muffled by the engine parts. Probably a good thing, Emily thought as she danced from the engine room. She had no idea what he wanted, but she’d find an armful of strange bits and bobs and he’d be happy for a while. The closer they got to Neptune, the less optimistic Emily was about their chances. Nigel was certifiably insane. And so was his project.

  She drifted down the corridor to the personnel quarters. Jack had disabled all the locks. She wandered in and out of rooms, stirring through drawers and lockers as she pleased. The crew had left most of their possessions behind. Not much of it was very interesting, it was mostly pictures of people she didn’t know. And would never meet now.

  She twirled in her blue nightgown in front of mirrors, dancing to the music in her head. She’d tried ballet, years ago. But her family was military, or so her grandparents had insisted. She learned to dance the waltz and the foxtrot and a handful of others appropriate to officer’s balls. She attempted a cha-cha, then giggled as she tripped over her feet. Cha-cha’s were never played at the formal affairs she’d been allowed to attend. She’d always wanted to go slumming with the enlisted folks. Their dances sounded much more fun, with wild music and shouting and drinking songs. She wanted at least a taste of wildness before being locked into dress whites and protocol that would make anyone’s spine calcify in an upright position. She’d never gotten what she wanted.

  Until now.

  She laughed and twirled, spinning until her skirts flared wide.

  Jack caught her as she tumbled sideways, dizzy from the spinning. She blinked and scrambled backwards, out of his hold. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. No, she’d never gotten what she truly wanted. Not even now.

  “Sorry, sir,” she panted. “I was just—“

  “Dancing?” Jack smiled. “Computer, play a waltz, please, and pipe it throughout the ship.”

  “Do you have a preference?” the computer asked in its clipped slightly feminine voice.

  “Yes,” Emily spoke quickly, interrupting the captain. “Brahms, opus 39 in A-flat major.”

  Jack smiled like the sun breaking through clouds. “One of my favorites. Would you do me the honor?” He offered his hand.

  The sweet piano music filled the corridor as Emily stepped into the circle of his arms. Her skirt flared as he swept her into a graceful waltz through the empty ship.

  Nigel grimaced at the saccharine strains of an orchestra in full voice. Whatever the captain and that floozy of a first officer were doing, it wasn’t looking for the parts he needed. He’d have to go scrounge them himself.

  Again.

  He stomped from the engine room. He needed personal entertainment devices so he could strip out the control chips. He started in th
e officer’s quarters. They were more likely to own the expensive versions he needed. He yanked open drawers, then pawed through the contents, leaving a trail of destruction behind. The mess didn’t matter. Nothing would matter if he didn’t get his drive working. Four days until they were too close to Neptune. Four days until the planet sucked them down.

  Four days until they plunged to a slow death as the atmosphere slowly crushed them into nothing.

  If he were a romantic, he’d console himself with the thought he’d end up as a rain of diamonds deep inside the blue swirls of Neptune.

  He snorted. He was about as romantic as that stupid turducken Emily had been babbling about.

  “My drive does not look like a roasted chicken. Or any kind of edible fowl.” He threw a handful of uniforms onto the floor and rooted in the back of a drawer. “Ah, yes. Perfect.” He stuffed the small video player in a pocket then moved on to the next cubby.

  Jack watched, entranced, as Emily spooned another glob of sundae into her perfect mouth. She insisted it was too wide, but he liked the way every emotion sent it shifting. Like now, a little pouty and puckered as she let the ice cream melt on her tongue. She wiped a drop of hot fudge from her chin, then licked her finger.

  “You haven’t touched yours,” she said after she swallowed. She met his gaze, stared deep into his hazel eyes. “You’re staring at me.”

  “And you’re staring right back. You have beautiful eyes.” He stirred his spoon through his sundae, scooping up a lump of cherry.

  Emily set her spoon in her dish, her fingers holding it precisely, placing it carefully at exactly thirty degrees off center. Her smile of a moment before had disappeared. She looked haunted, resigned, disconsolate. Jack rolled the words through his head, searching for a poetry form to fit the emotions rolling through his heart.

  She pushed to her feet. “We should help Nigel.”

  He caught her hand. “You know his drive is not going to work. It’s hopeless. We may as well enjoy what little time we have left. Emily.”

  She reluctantly pulled her hand free. “We are both officers. We should act in accordance with our rank.”

  His heart broke when she added, “Sir.”

  “Why?” He blocked her exit from the wardroom. “No one will ever know, will they? Our communication system is off.”

  “And it shouldn’t be, sir. We should call the Ares, get a report on the rest of the crew. At least let them download the science scans we have of Neptune.” She plucked at the blue satin of her nightgown. “I apologize for my lapse in discipline, sir.”

  “Emily, please. We can turn on the equipment, make a status report, if that will make you happy. I’ll even let the computer send all the data scans we’ve got. We can even set it to keep running scans automatically, all the way through the atmosphere. Until . . .” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “Until we’re gone.”

  “I should go change into something more befitting.”

  “That dress is beautiful. You are beautiful. I’ve wanted to say this for years, ever since you first walked onto my bridge.” He reached for her hand again.

  “Sir, we can’t do this.”

  “Why not? We’re doomed. We’re going to die, and I am going to do it on my terms. Not the Navy’s and certainly not my mother’s. Computer, play that song I told you to save.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The sweet strains of a violin playing Salut d’Amour dripped from the speakers. Jack wrapped his arms around Emily, drew her into his embrace, reached for her lips with his.

  “Oh, please!” Nigel’s sarcastic remark destroyed their moment. “Computer, shut that crap off.”

  The song broke off mid-note.

  Jack rounded on the weaselly little man. “You, sir, are out of line and out of uniform!”

  “You’re one to talk.” Nigel shot a pointed look at the captain’s green silk pajama pants. “While the two of you are eating ice cream and swooning, I’ve been working to save us. Two days to doomsday, people. But I think I’ve got the last problem solved.”

  He shoved between them to slap a sheet of paper on the table amid the puddles of caramel and whipped cream. He tapped a tangle of scribbles to one side. “See the transducer array here? It needs the power inducements tripled and the confabulator transmorgrified with a three-pronged hamiltonian stack.”

  “What?” Jack wrinkled his nose in confusion.

  “Quantum engineering,” Emily answered, with a solemn nod.

  “Exactly.” Nigel plowed on, ignorant of the look they traded over his scruffy head. “What I need you to find are more of these.” He set a control circuit board on the table. “I scrounged that one out of the telescopic binary controller. I also need a gimbal mount and half a dozen steel bearings. The hydroponic plant unit should have the mount. The steel bearings are going to have to come out of the docking port bumper pods.”

  “I’ll get the bearings,” Emily said.

  “Are you certain?” Jack asked her.

  “If there’s a chance, we have to take it, sir.” She turned smartly on her heel, then marched from the wardroom.

  “I should lock you in the brig, you nasty little man,” Jack said to Nigel after Emily was gone.

  “You can play footsie with her later, after I save our hides.” Nigel matched the captain’s angry glare with one of his own. “If you want to die, I can shove you out the airlock right now.”

  Jack flexed his fists open and closed, then open. His shoulders sagged. “What do you need me to find?”

  “Video player circuits. Your friend, the computer, should have a bunch in the comm room. Or maybe the ship’s library. Go find them, rip them open, and yank these puppies free. I need at least a dozen more.”

  Jack slouched from the room. His grandmother would be smirking, right next to his mother, if they could see him now. They’d never believed in him, not as a poet, only as a puppet for their ambitions. He’d rather die than return to their influence.

  Nigel crouched in front of the monstrosity he’d built into and around the engine. His hand rested on a lever painted with bright red nail polish.

  “It looks like a giant duck,” Jack said. He squinted at the thing. Large wings swung out on either side. A heavy bit that resembled a bill on a head hung over Nigel, as if the giant metal bird were about to eat him.

  “It is not a duck! It’s a highly sophisticated, and very elegant, prototype of the Jonesian quantum FTL jump drive.” Nigel shifted around to glare at Jack. He kept his hand tight on the handle, though.

  “I see you named it after yourself. Isn’t that a bit presumptuous of you?”

  “Hush,” Emily ordered, her voice crisp and professional. She stood over a radar screen hastily assembled and mounted over the dead steering controls. “We’re down to one hundred thousand kilometers from the highest level of clouds.” The ship groaned under the gravitational pull of the giant ice planet. It was only going to get worse.

  “Give me a countdown,” Nigel shouted, turning back to his invention.

  “Still looks like a duck,” Jack muttered.

  “It does not!”

  “Five.”

  “Are those my command clusters? You shouldn’t be wearing those.” Jack glared at Nigel, who was in an officer’s dress whites stolen from one of the purser’s racks.

  “I can wear what I want. I think I deserve a promotion after all my hard work.”

  “Four.”

  “I’m the captain and the only one authorized to grant field promotions on this ship. If your duck works, then we’ll talk about promotions.”

  “Three.”

  “It is not a duck!”

  “Two.”

  “Is too.”

  “Is not.”

  “One.”

  Nigel glared at Jack.

  Jack pursed his lips, waiting until the last second. “Quantum duck drive,” he whispered just as Emily said, “Now!”

  Nigel yanked on the lever while turning to shout, “It is NOT
a duck!” He slipped, his hand shoving the lever assemblage. Metal screeched on metal as it shifted back an inch.

  The giant quantum duck wobbled. A high whistling filled the air. The metallic wings started to twitch. Golden light pulsed out from the breast of the bird, a bubble that grew larger with each laborious beat of the wings.

  Nigel cackled. “It’s working! It’s really working!”

  Emily bent her head over her radar screen. Her face was blank, bland professionalism at its finest. “No readings at all on the scope.”

  “There aren’t supposed to be any, not in jump space.” Nigel leapt up from the floor, rushing to her side.

  Jack stared in despair at the giant glowing golden duck. It had saved their lives at the cost of his soul. His poetry screamed as it died, twisted under the weight of his mother’s ambitions. He’d have to face her again. He’d have to return.

  “We should be far enough now. I think we passed right through Neptune.” Nigel rubbed his hands together, like the evil rat he was. He pranced back to his freakish contraption.

  “I’m getting something,” Emily said, squinting at her screen. “Wait, if that’s Neptune, it’s dropping behind us. Very fast. We’re gaining speed.”

  The golden bubble of energy around the bird pulsed as it expanded.

  Jack squinted into the light. Maybe they weren’t so doomed after all. “Is it supposed to do that?”

  Nigel danced in front of the duck, his arms waving. He looked like a demented monkey.

  “If this is correct, we’re closing in on seven times the speed of light.” Emily straightened, her dress whites glowing yellow. “We’re way beyond the solar system. Nigel, shut it off.” Her voice wavered only a little.

  “I’m trying,” Nigel shouted. “The control lever is inside the bubble. I can’t reach it, not without vaporizing my entire arm and quite possibly the entire ship.”

  “What kind of fool builds the off switch inside the containment field?” Jack couldn’t help insulting the man. Maybe he was saved after all. Death or his mother? Death was preferable.